Jessican
Sheriff
- Location
- New Braunfels, TX
See them live: Fish cam
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In May 2020, I decided to turn my Reefer 170 into a clownfish harem. I picked up 10 baby spotcinctus clownfish:
I lost one early on, but the other nine have thrived. There’s been some tussling here and there, as clownfish do, but nothing serious. And boy have they grown:
Problem is, the anemones in that tank have been nothing but trouble. I started with 20-30 BTAs that slowly just withered away and died. Switched over to LTAs, and two were doing well, but just weren’t large enough for the 9 clowns. I picked up a third about a month ago, and it never settled in - earlier this week, it died and took one of the other two out with it. The one that’s left is slowly shrinking and just wasn’t going to be able to support the clowns long term.
In my Reefer 525, though, the BTAs are thriving and have all but taken over the right side of the tank:
The problem is these two monsters, Dora & Diego - my established, mated pair of spotcinctus clownfish, who currently have a fresh clutch:
So I texted @Humblefish and asked, on a scale of “successful harem” to “complete bloodbath”, how bad of an idea would it be to try to move the 9 juvies to the tank with the established pair? I’m almost certain that none of the harem have turned female, they were still working out the pecking order in their tank. And we both agreed that it might actually work, because there are so many that it might just overwhelm the established pair, and there are certainly plenty of nems to go around.
So today, I moved all 9 into an acclimation box, and then set them loose:
And to my surprise, they actually seem okay. Dora isn’t fixating on any one newbie in particular, and is actually letting one of the young clowns help tend the eggs!
I’ll keep everyone posted on how this goes, but I’m really impressed with how the initial introduction went.
—————————————
In May 2020, I decided to turn my Reefer 170 into a clownfish harem. I picked up 10 baby spotcinctus clownfish:
I lost one early on, but the other nine have thrived. There’s been some tussling here and there, as clownfish do, but nothing serious. And boy have they grown:
Problem is, the anemones in that tank have been nothing but trouble. I started with 20-30 BTAs that slowly just withered away and died. Switched over to LTAs, and two were doing well, but just weren’t large enough for the 9 clowns. I picked up a third about a month ago, and it never settled in - earlier this week, it died and took one of the other two out with it. The one that’s left is slowly shrinking and just wasn’t going to be able to support the clowns long term.
In my Reefer 525, though, the BTAs are thriving and have all but taken over the right side of the tank:
The problem is these two monsters, Dora & Diego - my established, mated pair of spotcinctus clownfish, who currently have a fresh clutch:
So I texted @Humblefish and asked, on a scale of “successful harem” to “complete bloodbath”, how bad of an idea would it be to try to move the 9 juvies to the tank with the established pair? I’m almost certain that none of the harem have turned female, they were still working out the pecking order in their tank. And we both agreed that it might actually work, because there are so many that it might just overwhelm the established pair, and there are certainly plenty of nems to go around.
So today, I moved all 9 into an acclimation box, and then set them loose:
And to my surprise, they actually seem okay. Dora isn’t fixating on any one newbie in particular, and is actually letting one of the young clowns help tend the eggs!
I’ll keep everyone posted on how this goes, but I’m really impressed with how the initial introduction went.
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